


Singular

by Polly_Lynn



Series: The "Unnamed" Series [4]
Category: Castle
Genre: Angry Sex, F/M, Fantasy, Masturbation, Sexual Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2016-10-24
Packaged: 2018-08-24 10:38:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8369104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: The anger comes in waves by night.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A surprise entry in the Unnamed series. I had thought of this as a possibility way back when I was writing, discarded it when I stopped. It passed an insomniac night recently. Set after A Death in the Family (1 x 10) and before Deep in Death (2 x 01).

The anger comes in waves by night. Mostly by night, and in daylight no one asks. Everyone notices he’s gone. His absence looms. But there's a taut, laden silence in the shape of him, and not a soul has dared ask since Ryan, the perennial loser of whatever short-straw process they came up with, no doubt.

_So . . . Castle . . . ?_

The hardly begun question had trailed off. He'd turned tail and run under the sheer force of her glare. 

Before that, it was Lanie. That was harder. 

_My mom's case._

She'd managed to choke that out. Just managed, and that was that. A low-voiced _damn._ A furtive look and a question bitten back. A jaw opened and shut just as quickly, because the two of them have been down this road before, and their friendship might not have weathered it if not for Lanie's unique blend of ferocity and mercy.

No one asks now. She forgets about it for hours on end. Days, if the work falls that way. If the call comes late and carries her from night to morning to night again. 

But when it doesn't fall just so—when there's the whole night long to remember—the anger comes in waves. 

She's not sleeping. Sometimes in the wee hours, her eyes will finally close. Her breath will steady, and she'll find something like rest for enough minutes in a row that she's able to keep it together day to day. Able to keep upright when there's nothing but the mundane to carry her forward. 

Sometimes she finds rest enough, but not lately. Lately, it's been wave after wave after wave. It's been her mind racing down the same narrow tunnel, and she has to keep her eyes front. Has to keep focus on the rage, not the fact that he's gone. The slicing pain of old wounds, not the agony of recent injury. 

 _It's about your mother_  

That's how it always starts on the worst nights. The words echoing and echoing, and the anger washes over her. Every detail from the fear in his eyes to the sharp, unpleasant smell of hospital disinfectant. To the pain snaking its way through her and the helpless fists she'd pressed against her own thighs as she'd backed away from him. It washes over her, and her heart is pounding. Her eyes are sandpaper dry and her skin is tight. Crawling with it. Fury and exhaustion and she _needs_ to sleep. 

It's not abstract any more. Something that has to happen before too much longer. It’s _this_ night. _This_ wave. She knows from experience, from ten years ago, from five, from three. She's pushed herself to dangerous extremes. She’s let obsession carry her off, and she knows the signs of imminent collapse. She can't go on like this, and she Just. Needs. A little. Fucking. Sleep.  

But it won't come. She forces her eyes closed and sees a pulsating field of blue on black. Of red green silver sparks. A wire diagram of limbs and lungs and the turning world with blueprints and lines and words scrolling too fast to read. Too many to ignore. It's cacophony and agony and she can't go on. 

Fingernails dig at her hip. Razor half-moons of pain, and her breath catches in her throat at the novelty of it. Actual pain that stops the light show. That silences everything but the punch of her heart against her ribs. It wipes away every word. Every conscious thought, leaving only a moan low in her throat. 

Her palm slides downward. It pushes roughly past the drawstring waist of her pants. She pinches the skin at the crease of her thigh hard enough to mark. Her nails dig in again, and suddenly it takes her. Desire and desperation, and she should have known better. Should have realized how freely that's mixed with anger, almost since the beginning with him.  

_Him_

She should have been on her guard, but it's too late now. She's kicking the covers from her body. She's dragging the loose material of her t-shirt upward, her nails leaving furrows along the way. Searing trails that bump along the topography of her ribs.  

Her fingers close mercilessly around one nipple. She cries out in the darkness. It's ragged and helpless and has far less to do with the lightning shock of pain than the flood of memory. Cinderblock at her bare back. The texture of the wall in his hallway. His teeth. His hands and tongue and body, solid, over and under and against hers. 

She thinks of the marks he left. She left. Bruises like trophies interrupting the too-pale expanse of her skin a day after the first time. After the second, the third. The way they made her shiver each time to think of the moment of their making. His lips, his teeth, his fingers and her blood rising to the surface. The way her mouth would fall open to see them in the long Cheval mirror. The way her hand would travel south as her breasts rose and fell and she'd revel in what never happened.   

It's the memory that draws each gasp and cry and moan from her throat now as her body arches and writhes. The all-too-damned-inspiring tide of memory. 

Her eyes close in the here and now. She pushes the image of him away with the force of will. Pushes away the buzz of stairwell fluorescents and the warm, gold light of his loft. The heavy, welcome warmth of his body and his quick-study lips, tongue, fingers, teeth.   

Her legs splay wide and her hips buck, wildly out of step with the suddenly slick fingers that dive between her legs. She tries to calm herself. Tries to focus and find her rhythm, but she's too exhausted for that. Too utterly exhausted and _angry._

She presses at her clit. Plucks and circles, but it's like every well-known inch of her body has hidden itself away. Every practiced, tried and true maneuver just ratchets up the tension as release skitters just out of reach. 

She slides her hand further down. Grinds against the heel of it and slips a finger inside herself. Another and another. She rocks her hips helplessly upward. Her free hand closes hard around her breast, but it's all empty, clumsy, frustrating gesture.

"Damn you!" 

Her voice pierces even the thick air of the summer night. She swears she hears the wooden shudders creak with it, and the old glass rattle in its frame, but she's past caring. She twists on to her side, her hand still desperately cupped between her legs. 

"Damn you, Castle." 

She moans into the pillow, and his name is like an invocation. It calls back the tide of memory. Her fingers are feather-light this time as they glide up her ribs. Feather light as she trails a lazy zig zag over and around her clit.  Her breath catches, and she remembers the huff of laughter against her neck. Call and response when he'd realized that she's ticklish. She hears the low, seductive burr of his voice in her ear— _allow me_ —as his hand slipped between their bodies, confident and unerring as he coaxed her right to the edge and waited for her to fall first. 

_Allow me_

_Allow me_

_Allow me_  

She surrenders to it then. The tide of memory and more. Fantasy she swore she'd never indulge in again. She imagines his hands. His fingers gliding through the mess of her desire. His tongue. His teeth nipping and tugging at one breast, then the other. She imagines the weight of his body pressing hers hard into the mattress, the drive of his hips and the maddening, full sensation of him seated deep within her. She hears the litany of filthy, funny, earnest things he'd murmur when he thought she was far gone enough that he might get away with it. The filthy, funny, earnest things dancing behind his eyes when he didn't dare say a word. 

She imagines the two of them. His body and hers and how good they were in every ridiculous place. Every ludicrous situation,  how _good,_ and every nerve in her snaps taut like a sheet caught by a sudden summer wind. 

She comes abruptly enough that her eyes fly wide. She sees herself in the long mirror across the room, wide-eyed and open mouthed, her skin milk-white in the dim light through the window. She sees herself for just a moment before she's falling back into the pillows into the tangle of linen, already more than half asleep as the tension bleeds out.

 _Beautiful,_ she hears him say as she falls the rest of the way. She feels his hands in her hair, his lips darting from her temple to the corner of her mouth. His thumbs teasing the soft of her neck as he tastes the skin there. She remembers his voice, soft and hypnotic. _So fucking beautiful every time, Kate._  

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading.


End file.
